adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabhikwa Successful solutions
Sometime last year my contract with an international NGO came to an end and I found myself on the job market. We all know how it is on the job market. The jobs are not available and for the few available, the competition is very stiff. As I was stressing on my unemployment and lack of money I had very encouraging discussion with a close friend of mine.
My friend told me that I should take my situation just as a passing phase, meant to teach me one or two things. He went further to say money was not everything in life and we shouldn’t worship money. Real happiness comes from being content with what we have and having quality time with our beloved with or without money.
My good friend reminded me what another friend had also told me, that in life we shouldn’t only focus on what we lack but we must also look at what we have and be thankful for that.
This other friend of ours is now late — may her soul rest in eternal peace. The irony of this whole discussion with my friend is that this friend of mine is someone who is fairly rich but he had all these humble ideas about money. He said, “money doesn’t make you happy or a better human being; it just gives you more physical convenience over someone who might not have as much as you have”.
He said “money just gives you a bit of physical advantage in your day to day operations. Where we have someone with one car for the whole family to share, someone with a bit of money will have maybe three cars, one for himself, one for the wife and maybe another one for children to drive if they are grown up.
The mobility of such a family is therefore easier. Where someone can have a two-bedroomed house for a big family to share, a person with money will have each child have their own bedroom”.
He was quick to say that, the child sleeping alone in a big bedroom is not necessarily a happy child and those four sleeping in one bedroom are not necessarily sad children. The wife driving the extra car is not necessarily a happy wife.
Thus all that money does just gives you a bit more space, advantage and flexibility in your operations but it’s not what makes you happy.
The intrinsic things that define us as humans and give us real happiness are priceless. These are love for one another, respect for one another and spending quality time with our beloved, wisdom, honesty, humility, peace, joy, happiness the list is endless.
All these things money cannot buy. Money buys a water bed but it doesn’t buy the sleep. Many people spend sleepless nights on very expensive beds. Money buys an expensive watch but it doesn’t buy the time. Money can buy books but it doesn’t buy the wisdom and knowledge.
Parents today send their children to very expensive schools but they still bring home very bad report cards to their sadness. Money can buy sports regalia like football boots but it cannot buy the skill.
Money can buy an expensive vehicle but it cannot buy the joy of driving it and safety on the road. People drive very expensive cars, absent minded, going through red robots, stressing about many other things, including the loans that they have bought these expensive cars with.
Money can buy or build an expensive house but it doesn’t buy the peace and the happiness in this house. Money can buy the looks, expensive clothes for a young person who is searching but it doesn’t buy a good marriage.
The world today is full of “rich” unhappy people. We have gone too far in search of money, ignoring the things that really make us happy. For some of us, our children do not know us. We wake up when they are still in bed to go chase after money and we return home when they are in bed again.
The maids are their parents. The superstitious have gone to seek various kinds of business boosting fetishes.
Some have even sacrificed relatives and even children to be rich. How do you enjoy money which supposedly “comes” because you killed someone, you killed your child? How on earth can you enjoy blood money? Some of the superstition prescriptions by the medicine men have even caused us more pain.
Some of people must not marry for the money spinning powers to work, some must not have children, some must not bath, and some must always be indoors as if under house arrest.
We hear stories of “goblins” that must be fed, goblins that need wives . . . all sorts of stories, all in the name of money. It is when we have made lots of money that we realise we didn’t need it in the first place to be happy. We realise we have made money at the expense of real happiness, we have made money at the expense of our children, we have made money at the expense of our dear marriages, we have made money at the expense of our dignity.
Many a man today have good jobs but because of greed they got involved in the so-called “deals” to be rich and today they are in the streets languishing in self-made poverty.
Many people regret on their death beds and regret not having spent quality time with their beloved and they die bitter because they know they are leaving their money behind. Money is necessary in our lives but we need to know that it doesn’t buy us the important things in life, it only buys material and material is not everything in life.
We have seen rich celebrities dying pathetic deaths under drug and alcohol abuse and all. Some of us might have heard the story of the rich man who told his wife and daughter on his death bed that he wanted to be buried with all his money. When he died his wife wrote out a cheque of the value of all his money and buried it with him but she kept the hard cash.
The daughter asked her why she did that and she said they would be arrested if they buried the hard cash with him because the money belonged to the State, what their father had was the value of his money’s worth, which she had buried with him in the cheque and wherever he was going if there were banks, he would cash his cheque and redeem his money.
We do need money to physically function but we certainly do not need money to be happy.
Online Reporter